708/Siege of the Ghost Spider: Kiss from a Rose on the Grave

Siege of the Ghost Spider: Kiss from a Rose on the Grave
Date of Scene:	23 March 2020
Location:	Shadowcrest Manor - Bristol Township
Synopsis:	Gwen and Zatanna reunite at a grave.
Cast of Characters:	Zatanna Zatara, Gwen Stacy
Tinyplot:	Siege of the Ghost Spider

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Zatanna Zatara has posed:
It had been a few days since Gwen stepped into the Siege Perilous. With most of the ice cream gone, and no more tears left to cry, Zatanna has to move on. At least that's what she's convincing herself. Her chances of seeing Gwen Stacy again were nil. She watched the news and scoured it - hoping, maybe that Ghost Spider would show up. She had missed the page 6 story about a girl waking up after a months long coma.

The daughter of a police captain. Gwen Stacy. She'd freaked. But she missed that, because it's not what she was looking for.

She had to do something though. To tell her goodbye. She had a chance to say those three words to her. She didn't hear them, she's sure of it. And she didn't say them back.

But she had figured out what to do. At the cemetary, she approaches what she was told the tombstone would be. She expects to find the grave of Gwendolyn Maxine Stacy.

She's dressed in a simple black dress, overcoat over it, her hair free as it frames her face. Across her arms are a dozen red roses, wrapped with baby's breath and held together in wax paper to be set at her grave. Her heels click lightly on the concrete as she walks down the path.

Gwen Stacy has posed:
Day three of Gwen's return home and it was abundently clear that things weren't exactly normal around the Stacy home... her father was all over her, seeing if she needed anything, promising that he'd never let anything happen to her, swearing that this would never happen again... She just wanted to cry herself to sleep. She just wanted to think about Zatanna until exhaustion claimed her and she woke up on the next dreary day.

Reaching out to slap the alarm on her phone, she'd thought about trying to look up Zatanna.. see if she was working at the panara bread.. but everytime she started to type it, her fingers stalled and she set the phone aside. She even tried to ignore the fact that her hair had grown out... that made sense really. She'd been in a coma.

She hadn't asked how or why and her father hadn't volunteered. She just assumed the fight with Lizard had ended with her suffering a head injury. Which left a cold feeling in her gut that it had all been a dream.. a nightmare that somehow became a wonderful memory in the end.

The only reassuring thing was the necklace she'd woken with around her neck...

It's now day three.. and she just can't stomach it anymore.

Slinking out while her father was at work, she made her way towards the cemetary... drawn there for reasons she's not entirely sure of.. But that's where she'd gone so many times over the last few months. Gone there to sit with herself.. resting her head against the tombstone that promeniently displayed her name.

Long blonde hair blowing free with a simple black band tied through the midst, she's wearing clothing that... are unfamiliar to her. A long dark coat, a pencil skirt and blouse... Things that felt like hers but definitely weren't like anything she'd had in her closet. Sadness alone was all that kept her from really putting together the little clues.

Stepping out into the brisk evening air with an umbrella clutched beneath her arm, she made her way through the cemetary to the spot the tombstone would be.. where there was now a woman standing in a black dressed holding roses wrapped in babies breath and wax paper. The name on the tombstone read: Angela Lewis..

Gwen had stopped staring at every raven haired woman that passed her by now.. it made her heart hurt when she didn't see the face of the woman she loved staring back at her. "Did you know her?" She asks quietly without looking up. Hands in the pockets of her coat, arm hooked around the umbrella.

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
Angela Lewis.

Who was Angela Lewis?

"No." replies Zatanna quietly. "I was looking for someone else. A woman I was truly in love with, but couldn't admit it until I lost her." Her back is to Gwen, but that voice and hair. It's so much more familiar than maybe it should be. Even if she has never heard Zatanna quite this sad before. She grips the roses a little tighter.

"I guess I was in the wrong place." she admits, "Maybe I was wrong..." Maybe she didn't know Gwen at all. She even got the cemetary wrong. Looking down at the flowers, she sets them on the grave, regardless.

Because whoever Angela Lewis was, she needs love too.

"Was she someone you knew?" Zatanna asks, arranging the flowers a little absently, just to keep her hands busy.

Gwen Stacy has posed:
The voice is familiar, yes, but Gwen hears Zatanna in every woman. So many times she's been shaken awake when the neighbor calls out to her kids, rushed blindly to the window only to see some strange woman shouting at a snot nosed brat... It's like she's implanting what she wants to hear on anyone who says anything to her at all... So while she inwardly knows the familiarity to be Zatanna's voice, she doesn't hold any hopes now.

"I'm sorry." She says, sounding every bit as sad, staring down at Angela's tombstone where Zee is kneeling to arrange those flowers. "I use to come here every day, it feels like." She says to what she thinks is a stranger. Not looking up or back because that heart ache to see her girlfriend is entirely too great... and the fall from that disappointment is too hard. "Slept here several times..." She chuckles at that, trying to manage this long hair is becoming a hassle.

Spitting as some of it blows into her mouth, "Ugh..." She pulls the slip of cloth from the middle and twists it around into a ponytail to keep it from bellowing into her face with each little cust of wind, "There... easy peasy, limon squeezy." Said absently, hands sliding back into her pockets as she turns away from the woman.. "I just lost someone too... Someone I should have told I loved.." A sad smile follows, head bowed forward. "Whoever she is, I hope you run into her.."

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
Those words. It's like a spell. Zatanna freezes in place. The young sorceress shudders for a moment, on the verge of tears again. She doesn't want to go through this heartbreak again. "Slept here?" she asks in confusion. "Are you homeless? I have some connections with some shelters." With a breath, she hears Gwen sputtering with her hair.

One hand rises, her finger swirls for a moment, and she says, almost absently.

"Xif reh riah." And like that, the hair settles itself around Gwen's back in a neat little ponytail for her to handle with her hair tie.

"I hope you find her too."

Gwen Stacy has posed:
The familiar tingle runs up the back of Gwen's spine at those words, "What did you say..." Nevermind the fact that her hair just twisted itself around into a neat ponytail with a little black bow holding it all together... She spins around suddenly and moves over towards woman in the black dress..

"N-.. no.. I'm not homeless.. I..." Is she projecting? God, how she's hoping suddenly. The pounding of her heart in her throat is choking off her breath. "You..."

"You really just say words backwards?" Can she dare hope? What if she's wrong...

Nevermind that... what if she's /right/?

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
There's a small laugh. "Why? I was told that was magic." Zatanna responds. But as Gwen starts to approach her, the woman in the black dress turns to face her. And the blonde looks familiar. So familiar, yet so different. The hair, the look. She was used to fishnets over t-shirts and the shaved sides of her girlfriend's hair.

No. Her lover. She was so much more than a girlfriend. She catches a glimpse of the blonde, and her heart stops - sapphire eyes wide as she looks at her.

Then down at her chest. Not to look at her breast -- but what could be hanging between them.

Proof.

Gwen Stacy has posed:
Hanging over her blouse is a familiar chain with a bottle in which the disassembled portions of a clock dangles dangerously near her modest cleevage. Her face is exactly the same, even if the clothes and hair aren't. Her body is toned, and small. Everything in Gwen's closet seemed a little too big for her, not that she was ever //big//, just not fit in the way this version of her is.

Sapphire eyes...

Gwen stares into them... lost in them.. drinking them up as her mouth opens as if to say something, finds no words to escape, and just lets it hang there like a broken ornament on her face..

When she /does/ speak, it's from a dry throat, "Zee?" Tears already welling up in her eyes..

Please, please, please, remember her..

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
Sapphire eyes widen as they rest on the pendant on her chest. She only ever made one the way she made before. With... what she did with it. Stepping closer to Gwen, Zatanna's eyes search hers, and she reaches out to touch her cheek, And then down to the pendant. Her hand rests on it for a moment.

And then she speaks. If it responds, she'll know.

"Ruo tsrif ssik."

If it's her, truly her, the pendant will share that image of Gwen and Zatanna's first kiss - the first kiss that shows that moment, that moment in time, where Gwen and Zatanna realized their affections for each other.

Gwen Stacy has posed:
The moment shared together in Zatanna's kitchen. A surprise, likely to both of them, as they shared peanut butter sandwiches (fingers) and then surprised when that affection spilled over... Gwen sees it as those words are spoken, seeing it in those Sapphire eyes, through her own teary stare.

Both her hands grip the sides of Zatanna's face, pulling her towards her, enveloping her in a hug, "Zee... How... wh-" SO many questions, so much relief.. That aching feeling of loss suddenly filled with a joy she wasn't even aware was possible..

Zatanna had thought she'd sent her home, but Gwen thought she'd gone as far away from it as she could get.

Now, though... Now she was home.

"Wait..." She closes her hands upon the sorceresses shoulders and holds her out at arms length, "Before you disappear and I wake up in a cold sweat... I have to tell you something and it can't wait." Pause, "I hate my hair." always the humor...





"I love you too.."

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
"I don't know, I kind of like it. More for me to play with." Zatanna starts to say in a teasing lit, the memory of that kiss true. Real. And then Gwen says those words. And there's no more need to talk. She can't find words. Sapphire eyes on her, warm lips pulled into a smile. Her hands drop down to the other woman's hips, and she pulls Gwen in.

Her mouth is to hers, kissing her, breathing her in, and she swallows a sob as she pulls her in tight to her. She's dreaming, she has to be. Gwen's going to disappear any second, and she's going to wake up in her bed. But for now?

Kissing her is heaven enough.

Gwen Stacy has posed:
Gwen doesn't even flinch away from the kiss, it's like finally being home at last. For three days she's been sitting on the cusp of an endless sadness, but now.. here.. at the spot where there had previously been a grave with her name written on the stone? She couldn't possibly be happier.

"Zee, baby, please take me home?" There's so many questions, but... everything feels /right/ since she was suddenly thrust into this reality. Her world isn't turned upside down anymore... it's just sideways.. but she's not being pulled away from Zatanna, so..

They can fix it.

Together.

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
There's not a single word of complain from Zatanna as she looks down into Gwen's eyes. Is it her Gwen? This world's? Something between? She's not sure. What she is sure of though?

"Emoh."

And thet disappear.